Red Wings top Canucks as Pavel Datsyuk scores twice
The streaking Detroit Red Wings were able to laugh about a power outage at aging Joe Louis Arena.
Pavel Datsyuk scored twice and Detroit beat the Vancouver Canucks 5-3 on Sunday for their fourth straight victory.
About a third of Joe Louis Arena, including the Vancouver zone, went dark 29 seconds into the game after a minor power failure. The game was delayed 33 minutes.
"That's the beauty of the Joe," Niklas Kronwall said about the arena that opened in 1980. "It's been around for a long time. It's kind of the charm of it. You never know what's going to happen."
Kronwall, Danny DeKeyser and Gustav Nyquist also scored, Henrik Zetterberg had two assists and Jimmy Howard made 30 saves for Detroit.
Linden Vey scored twice, and Shawn Matthias added a goal for Vancouver, which spent a lot of time in the Detroit zone in the final 20 minutes.
"It's disappointing," Matthias said. "You look at the third period, we dominated them. All the lines were working and all the lines were creating chances."
The Red Wings appeared to have the game in hand after going to the third up 3-1 but the Canucks hung around and twice made it one-goal game.
"I didn't think we were near as good as we can be," Detroit coach Mike Babcock said. "I thought we turned over some pucks and backed in a bit but we did enough good things to win."
Canucks coach Willie Desjardins begged to differ.
"They were better than us," he said. "They were really strong in the corners and in their breakouts."
Kronwall opened the scoring at 3:15 of the first period, beating Ryan Miller with a slap shot, and Nyquist made it 2-0 midway through the period with a one-timer on a power play.
Vey scored on a power play at 2:37 of the second, and Datsyuk countered late in the period with a power-play goal that appeared to hit Canucks forward Nick Bonino's skate before crossing the line.
Matthias and DeKeyser swapped goals early in the third before Vey added his second.
Datsyuk had an empty-net goal in the final minute. Miller made 25 saves in just his fourth loss of the season. The loss ended Vancouver's three-game winning streak.
The Red Wings played the third period without forward Justin Abdelkader after he left the game with a shoulder injury. Babcock said he did not believe it was serious.
NOTES: Red Wings D Brendan Smith returned after missing five games with a hand infection. Detroit sent D Xavier Ouellet to Grand Rapids of the AHL to open a roster spot. ... Miller stopped brother Drew, a Detroit forward, on a third-period breakaway attempt. The Red Wings plan to move to a new arena before the 2017-18 season.
